For years I told people that only Lagerstroemia fauriei was the only crepe myrtle we could grow in the Vancouver area. I based this on my observation that every L. indica or L. indica hybrid that I ever saw planted, died. No large Lagerstroemia indica specimens in the area. Seattle, yes, but not Vancouver. Just too cold and wet in the winter. I recall telling someone at the 2002 UBC Botanical Garden Perennial Plant Sale not to have too much confidence in the crepe myrtles that we were selling (they were donated plants—from where I could not say). The customer bought it anyway, and I remember wishing her good luck. Like, as if... She evidently gave the plant to her daughter and son-in-law, who live in New Westminster. They planted it against the south side of their house. Here it is in 2013. They report that it has never been damaged in the winter and that it has flowered well every year since it was planted. Jeez! I not only sold the plant, but pronounced it dead and buried before it got out of the parking lot. I've driven past the house hundreds of times, but never looked at it. Talk about not checking my assumptions. Does anyone recognize the cultivar?
So did I mis-identify this one, that I called L. x fauriei, near the Beach House in West Vancouver? To me it looks like the one you posted, after allowing for the over-saturated cellphone colours. Leslie's coat is a lighter turquoise. How would I distinguish the two species?
Lots of varieties here: http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/databases/crapemyrtle/crape_myrtle_varieties.html
But it doesn't say what they're cultivars of. But then, I see this line in a Clemson U. file a line about "species that are currently in cultivation: L. indica and L. indica x fauriei", and their list (no photos) also doesn't distinguish the species or hybrid. Now I can't imagine being able to distinguish those two species from a hybrid. I'm sure when I tried to ID the West Van tree (shrub), I found something that had similar colouring, with the red buds and light lavender flowers, but I'm not finding that now. Well, Douglas, what do you think of the L. indica 'Zuni' photo on this page (about 2/3 down)? It's shown elsewhere as Lagerstroemia indica x fauriei 'Zuni'. http://www.flickriver.com/photos/blackdiamondimages/tags/lagerstroemia/
Thanks Wendy and Andrey for the links. I have been using the North Carolina State Factsheet for info (no images, but also mentions cold-hardiness where significant). Lagerstroemia 'Zuni' is certainly a possibility, though I wouldn't call the New Westminster plant "rounded" and the reported size seems a bit small. (Wendy: Where exactly is the West Vancouver specimen?) I suspect that the two plants are the same, undoubtedly a commercial cultivar imported from the US by one or more of the local garden centres. Check out the image of 'Zuni' on the Monrovia website. Seems a bit light in colour to me. 'Catawba' seems a little better fit for colour, bark and size, but no mention of superior hardiness. I'm going to ask around at local garden centres. Perhaps someone will remember a cultivar name from 2002.
As to telling the difference between Lagerstroemia fauriei and L. indica and their hybrids, it seems to me that the Yakushima crepe myrtle has darker, more cinnamon-coloured bark and broader, more pointed and thinner leaves. The flowers are also only white (I believe), smaller and less densely produced in the inflorescence.
It's at 25th St and Belleview, at the start of the path from the parking area to the Beach House restaurant. There aren't any flowers on this street view. If you walk straight for the Beach House from the red car in this shot, there's a small path, and it's on the left of that path. Food was good too. [Edited]University of Arkansas has a page with links to pages with some photos by height, and the lists have photos, parentage and habit. They mention "The rather obscure and perhaps nearly extinct L. fauriei, found only in the island of Yakushima..." (rest of the sentence doesn't seem to follow from there). So it sounds like you would have been telling people to look for a fauriei hybrid, at any rate, or did you mean that it's so hopeless that only this one rare species would survive here and never mind the hybrid?
US National Arboretum has sheets up on these although it appears you can't get at them during the US government shutdown. Arborescent kinds known to have been in commerce prior to date of publication are accounted for by A. Jacobson in North American Landscape Trees (Ten Speed, Berkeley, 1996).
